Tyler Hollinger, owner of “farm-to-bar” venture Festival Cafe NYC, told Gothamist his issue was not with the vaccinations, but with the mayor making “arbitrary decisions” without consulting business owners or the Hospitality Alliance.
“I’m 100% pro-vaccine, I have been from the start,” Hollinger said. “All of our staff is double vaccinated. I’m triple vaccinated. The issue we’re talking about here is about people’s personal right to choose. And for the government to mandate this is absolutely ridiculous. And then on top of that, to have the hospitality industry be the enforcement agency without compensation is ridiculous. Why should I be the bully kicking children out of my restaurant when it’s Mayor Bill de Blasio’s problem? It’s absolutely insane.”
He said he felt the handling of this issue was indicative of mismanagement by the de Blasio and Cuomo administrations throughout the pandemic, highlighting a couple prime areas of frustration throughout the industry: “Let’s not forget that not a single person was harmed by propane heaters, right? And they took the propane heaters away. Let’s not forget that not a single person was harmed by cocktails-to-go. And they took cocktails-to-go away.”
Hollinger also fears restaurants getting stuck in an ouroboros of vaccine compliance checks: “It’s clear that we’re headed down this path where full immunity does not exist with the vaccine,” he said. “So every six months you’re going to need to get a booster. Am I supposed to now require people with only three shots, four shots, five shots, six shots? It’s absolutely ludicrous that the mayor has made the hospitality industry to be this enforcement for his own agendas.”
Pallava Goenka, one of the managing partners at Osteria La Baia, isn’t as bothered by having to check vaccination status, regardless of how many shots it is. “It does not make a huge difference to me personally, in the sense that as it is, we’re already checking,” he told Gothamist. “So now we’ve got to check a little bit more diligently to make sure it’s two.” He also sees the upside in the private-sector mandate, which he hopes will encourage more offices to bring workers back safely, and thus drive more foot traffic to Midtown in the long term.
He does think the city could do a better job of communicating these things though (“When you’re mandating a private sector, I get their bigger picture, but think there should be some dialogue with the private sector before this mandate comes”), a complaint shared by many in the business community, including Kathryn Wylde, the president of the Partnership for New York. She believes this will cause “more stress, more tension” around the ongoing efforts to have employees resume in-person work.
In the short term, Goenka is also concerned about the complications of checking children’s vaccination status, and people forgoing trips to NYC from places where their kids can’t get vaccinated. “It was poor timing in my opinion,” he said. “This is the best time of the year to come to New York and for people who have been longing to come to New York [with] their family, there’s so much excitement going on. And we are already managing the parents or the adults accompanying the kids coming to the restaurant. So to mandate kids, with proper guidelines, how are you checking their vaccinations? They honestly don’t always have ID cards.”
On that front, the city has announced that the NYC COVID Safe App will be updated later this week to allow parents to store their children’s vax cards. (There’s no word yet on whether the Excelsior Pass will get a similar update.) During his announcement, de Blasio added that more information about how restaurants and other businesses are expected to implement and enforce the new mandate won’t come until December 15th, after discussions with leaders in the business community.
Epidemiologists, including CUNY professor Dr. Denis Nash, have applauded the measure, telling Gothamist this week that the city should go even further in efforts to protect against the new variants, including limiting mass gatherings.
